Leave your mark on the streets of Salem with your favorite line of poetry!
Come by Old Town Hall, our festival headquarters, to get chalk and share your favorite line of verse around Old Town Hall and the sidewalks on Front Street. Scribble, doodle, draw, and write your favorite poetic line, or one you’ve composed spur of the moment. (FYI, it washes away with rain!) Project made possible through the support of the Public Art Commission and the City of Salem.
Filmmakers Kevin Carey and Mark Hillringhouse have again turned the camera on the life of a poet, as they did with their 2012 documentary about New Jersey’s Maria Mazziotti GIllan (All That Lies Between Us). With “Unburying Malcom Miller” they have focused on a Salem, Massachusetts poet whose work was influential enough that Gerald Stern said “all students should read it,” and whose life was strange enough that he went from being homeless and institutionalized to leaving bundles of hundred dollar bills in his kitchen drawer when he died in 2014. He also left behind a substantial canon of poetry which explored his personal relationships and his cynical view of the world around him. The film showcases his poems and his friendships with such poets as Leonard Cohen and a former Salem State faculty member and writer, Rod Kessler, who befriended Miller at the end of his life and took it upon himself to get to know him better beyond his death. Kessler’s interviews with those who knew Miller, along with readings by local poets of his work, reveal just how complicated and memorable a poet and a man can be to a community.
A question and answer with the filmmakers will follow as well as a live performance of the original “Malcolm’s Song,” written by R.G. Evans for the film.
At this year’s festival, we will feature poems on the theme of migration as part of our Raining Poetry project. Five poems were selected for display on the streets of Salem for the Massachusetts Poetry Festival.
Using a biodegradable water-repellent spray and stencils made by local artists, the organization will place poems throughout the streets of Salem. The spray vanishes once dry, so the poems are invisible—until it rains. Once wet, the area around the poems will darken, enabling passersby to read them.
Sixty-four entries were received from Massachusetts residents on the broad theme of migration. Our theme, Because We Come from Everything: Poetry & Migration, borrows a line from U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera’s poem, “Borderbus.”
Stop in at headquarters to find out where the poems are!
For this year's festival, poet Colleen Michaels and artist Stacy Thomas-Vickory of Montserrat College of Art along with students Brittney Butterfield and Grayson Gemmiti have created a paper garden of writing prompts adapted from The Daily Poet, a Two Sylvia's Press publication.
This outdoor, site-specific installation of 1,000 paper blooms will serve as a reminder of beauty's persistence in harsh climates. Participants are invited to spring into action by picking a flower. Each bloom, when unfolded, will reveal a writing prompt, an invitation to begin a poem. We invite you to use the garden as a meeting spot or as a place for contemplation. Get dirt under your nails and let a prompt get under your skin.
Locations:
Exterior Garden: Peabody Essex Museum, Axelrod Walkway
Interior Flower Shop: Peabody Essex Museum, Atrium
Three Maine poets--all with recently published books--read from their work and discuss the literary life in Maine.
Rough Magic is a New York-based band sprung from Cornelius Eady’s long and celebrated literary life, and from his desire to extend the boundaries of language expression to include the songs he had produced over the years and those that had emerged from a renewal of his musical creativity. In January of 2013, Eady released Book of Hooks, a two-CD and chapbook set of original tunes on Kattywompus Press. Almost by “magic,” a group of poet-musician-composers converged who shared Eady’s vision that text, melody, harmony, and rhythm all have an equally strong place in artistic expression. Rough Magic calls upon troubadour traditions and evokes the sounds and storytelling of blues greats like Muddy Waters, folk legends such as Woody Guthrie and the unexpected grooves and subject-matters of the Talking Heads. At the same time, band members hold a keen sense of innovation, as they are all working text-and-music makers engaged in building new combinations of words and sounds.
The musicians of Rough Magic have performed at poetry festivals, cafes, backyards and concert halls in New York City and internationally. The band has played alongside poetry and music greats such as Oliver Lake, Bob Holman, Sapphire, Sharon Olds, Marilyn Nelson, Nikky Finney, Toi Derricotte, and Papa Souso. In addition to Eady's prolific lyricism, the band draws upon texts by other poets such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Aliki Barnstone and Mary Molyneux. In the fall of 2013, Eady was commissioned by the Poetry Society of America to set the poems of Sterling Brown to music. Rough Magic performed the songs at a star-studded event at Cooper Union’s Great Hall honoring iconic Black poets of the 20th Century.
Rough Magic is: Cornelius Eady- voice and guitar, Robin Messing- voice, Charlie Rauh- guitar, Lisa Liu- guitar and keyboard, Leo Ferguson- drums, Emma Alabaster- bass and voice, and special guest Concetta Abbate- violin and voice.
Cornelius Eady and Lisa Liu will be performing duing this session.
A group reading from the poetry ecosystem that is Lowell, Mass., featuring selections from James Russell, Amy, and Robert Lowell as well as writings by five Lowell-linked writers today.
Elle Villanelle invites you to step into a world of auditory delights and playful sensuality. Visit the lustful linguists of the Bordello, tickle your own fancy or someone else’s at the game table, celebrate the flesh with our burlesque dance numbers, and engage in a private fantasy courtesy of our sexy poetry prompts. Enjoy cocktails and appetizers as Elle Villanelle and the bordello dwellers help you uncover poetry’s delicious naughtiness!
This concept was created by Stephanie Berger and Nicholas Adamski of The Poetry Society of New York.
Almost a decade ago, Professor of Clinical Pharmacology Donald Singer teamed up with poet and translator Professor Michael Hulse to establish the international Hippocrates Prize for poetry on a medical subject. They have spent many years investigating relations between the two disciplines of poetry and medicine, and are joined by Dr. Rafael Campo, poet and physician at Harvard Medical School, to present thoughts about the healing and sensitizing influence of poetry in clinical and therapeutic contexts and in medical education and training. Donald and Michael have been working to identify a global corpus of poetry on medical subjects, and together with Rafael will explore the characteristics of medical poetry written by patients, by medical professionals, and by professional poets.Owen Lewis, a psychiatrist-poet based at Columbia, will also join the panel. This promises to be an illuminating and salutary encounter.
The Poetry Society of America's current national series, Poetry and the Natural World, is travelling to five cities with a focus on poems and poets from any era that are in conversation with, or are inspired by, nature. In this fourth installment, we'll hear from Louise Glück.
Co-sponsored by Mass Poetry and the Poetry Society of America
